14 MAJOR JOHN F. LACEY 



calling upon us to arise, put on our armor, and sally forth. 



I doubt not that the call to John F. Lacey, to arise and 

 stand forth as the champion of the birds, came to him at 

 a time that he himself never set down, and could not name. 



But come it did ; and the while other men were laboring 

 for commercial and industrial causes, and striving to pass 

 bills that would appeal strongly to their own constituents, 

 there was one man who constituted himself a Committee 

 of One on Everybody's Business. It was, and ever has 

 been, everybody's business to save our valuable wild life 

 from slaughter and annihilation ; but alas ! how often it is 

 treated as nobody's business! 



I repeat that Major Lacey was the first member of Con- 

 gress who made the cause of the wild birds and beasts 

 particularly his own. At first he was treated by some of 

 his colleagues with good natured raillery, and taken every 

 way but seriously. But, like the good soldier that he was, 

 in more causes than one, he enlisted in the birds' cause, 

 not for three months' service, nor one year, nor three 

 years, but during the period of the war. From that mo- 

 ment down to his last day in Congress, he was never else- 

 where than on the firing line. 



His victories for the wild life cause were numerous and 

 important ; but his first one was the greatest of all. The 

 Lacey bird law is enough to render any name illustrious. 

 That act, to prevent all interstate traffic in game illegally 

 killed or shipped, was the first federal act for the better 

 protection of birds ; and it placed in the hands of the na- 

 tional government a weapon more powerful and far- 

 reaching than any cannon ever cast. It has prevented the 

 illegal slaughter, and sale in the markets, of uncountable 

 millions of game birds ; and the rogues that it has brought 

 to justice would, if herded together, make a great army. 



The long history of Mr. Lacey 's labors and achieve- 

 ments in Congress in behalf of wild life will be written 



